Monday, October 19, 2020

but, are the fisherman engaging in acts of terrorism and intimidation? should they refrain from violence, and commit to negotiating?

well, first of all, you'd have to let them negotiate - and nobody will. that's really the problem - the primary stakeholder has been removed from the discourse, which is absurd on it's face.

second, that's a bunch of bourgeois, neo-liberal bullshit - it's the exaltation of market theory to an ideology, and fuck that. on the left, we don't tell people to sit down and negotiate nicely, we take direct action and make things happen.

and, what this is is fundamentally organized labour engaging in direct action to stop an unregulated entity from overfishing. that's about as left-wing as you can get, and something the ndp should be standing with, in principle. but, it's been a long time since you could honestly expect that.

is it terrorism anyways, though?

well, it's a word, and it's a word that's been distorted for political gain so many times that it's lost meaning. i think that what mr singh really means to say is that most of the protesters are white. unfortunately. it's a dog whistle to brown voters - however unconnected from reality, it is.

but, was the haymarket bombing terrorism? were sit-down strikes terrorism? we could walk down this path for a while, and i suspect that mr. singh would probably deduct that labour activists were really just a bunch of terrorists the whole time - just as the bourgeois press and police state that he currently is upholding always said they were.

again, the problem with mr. singh is not his perspectives, exactly - they're consistently well aligned with the centre, or the centre-right. the problem is that he neither represents nor remotely understands - apparently - the demographic that the party he leads is supposed to represent in parliament.

and, it's not hard to understand why that party has been entirely wiped out of office east of montreal.

if mr. singh will not resign, despite it being clear that he should, then he should at least step back and let the greens navigate this, as they at least have some support on the ground.

standing in ottawa and denouncing his historical base - the people he is supposed to represent -  as terrorists is beyond counter-productive.